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Engineering Data Management in the Automotive Industry
Technical Paper
925147
Sector:
Event:
24th FISITA Congress
Language:
English
Abstract
Increasing competitive pressure within the vehicle industry is
evident through the drive for shorter lead times for the
introduction of new vehicles onto the market. At the same time,
manufacturers must improve quality and reliability to maintain
customer loyalty and increase market share. In response, many
vehicle companies are reviewing existing new vehicle development
processes with a view to their refinement and improvement. The
philosophy of simultaneous or concurrent engineering is being
adopted by many manufacturers. Multi-discipline project teams,
which break down traditional barriers between design, development
and production, are being established.
As well as the need for such organizational change, it is
necessary to consider new systems for managing data. In a
simultaneous engineering environment, new vehicle data of any kind
is constantly changing and is likely to be distributed across many
application systems and computer hardware platforms. Such systems
form the infrastructure which is essential to allow existing
processes to be improved an then automated, and for simultaneous
engineering project teams to function. Data management will
facilitate the sharing of data and the assembling of data for
specific development tasks.
General purpose, computerized engineering data management (EDM)
systems which offer considerable potential for managing data in a
simultaneous engineering environment have emerged in recent years.
Their successful use depends upon a clear understanding of the
organization's existing processes and how they should be
improved to successfully streamline and automate working practice,
capitalize upon existing data and exploit the power of modern
computer hardware. Achievement of these objectives will also
probably require customized software to integrate different
applications and complement the general purpose EDM system.
This paper discusses how implementing EDM can support
simultaneous working in a vehicle engineering environment. Some key
issues are discussed, and the features of a general purpose EDM
system are compared with the typical requirements of a vehicle
manufacturer. A methodology for specifying and implementing a
system is described, and the resulting benefits are discussed